In the United States, stock markets opened lower on Friday. The S&P500 index, which broadly describes the market, was down 0.4 percent, the technology-driven Nasdaq was down 0.5 percent, and the Dow Jones was down 0.3 percent. The US labor market report offered investors unpleasant surprises. Non-agricultural jobs were created in May far more than expected, with 272,000 new jobs created when Bloomberg’s consensus forecast of economists expected 180,000 new jobs. The revised reading for April was 165,000.
In May, industry created only 8,000 jobs instead of the forecasted 5,000 while in April it was anticipated to be at 6,571 thousand but actual figures were recorded as 6497 thousand. Moreover; US unemployment rate also increased in May to 4% compared to forecasts of 3.9%, which is a setback for investors who are waiting for interest rate cuts from the central bank (Fed). Interest rates rose after the report was published as there are no clear indications of a sustainable slowdown in inflation and hence Fed is not planning any interest rate cuts next week according to OP Markets senior market economist Jari Hännikäinen’s comment on this matter.”
On Friday evening; GameStop reported its interim results unexpectedly which caused a decline in its stock price by about 15%. Net sales decreased by almost a third compared to the previous period and operating loss reached $32 billion dollars. Keith Gill who made his fortune through meme shares trading will be doing a Gamestop livestream on Friday night where he shared his investment portfolio and bought Gamestop shares for around $116 million dollars. This news caused an even bigger drop in Gamestop’s stock price that day as compared to other companies like Nvidia which saw a slight dip by about $2%, and ride-sharing service Uber which rose up by about $3%
